Perpetual Calendars

Perpetual calendars let you specify criteria to create base calendars automatically. When criteria are specified, the associated calendar is automatically generated the first time a nonexisting base calendar is referenced.

To use perpetual calendars, a partitioned data set (PDS) must be defined and listed on the PCALDSN parameter of the CALENDAR statement in the CA Workload Automation SE initialization file. This data set contains members named PCALYYxx, where the xx creates the SCALyyxx members in the CALENDAR DSN. The yy portion of the SCALyyxx is the year for which this calendar is generated. After the SCALyyxx calendar has been generated, you can list it using the online Base Calendar option (DB.2.8). Online access to base calendars is a prerequisite for using perpetual calendars. Online access is defined with the DSN parameter on the CALENDAR statement of the initialization file.

Note: For more information about the initialization file, see the Systems Programming Guide.

Perpetual Calendars are designed for use as calendars where the scheduling days are constant from year to year. For example, a perpetual calendar can be used where weekdays are always schedule days and weekends are nonprocessing days. In this case, you would set up perpetual calendar criteria stating that weekends are nonscheduled. If all federal holidays are nonprocessing days in several of your base calendars, include a reference to a member that defined federal holidays as nonscheduled days in each of those calendar criteria members.

The perpetual calendar feature includes no new commands. However, when a command is issued that references a base calendar that does not exist, it causes the building of that base calendar when criteria for that calendar are correctly specified.

Note: On a RESOLV command, if you receive error message ‘SRC1-134 JOB jobname NOT RESOLVED - CALENDAR SCALyyss NOT AVAILABLE’ and SCALyyss is generated by a perpetual calendar, the calendar is not available because an error occurred while generating it from the perpetual calendar criteria. Use the PRINT command or the LIST function of the CALMOD command to display the specific error.

If a base calendar is not in the CALENDAR DSN, an attempt is made to load the calendar from a load module created from assembling and link editing CALENDAR macros. If no load module is present, the PCALDSN is checked to see if a perpetual calendar criteria member exists for that base calendar suffix. If PCALDSN has no corresponding member, the command issues the same error message as in past releases. If a PCALDSN member exists for that base calendar, that base calendar is generated using the criteria in the PCALDSN member, and saved in the CALENDAR DSN. Once the base calendar is generated, it is available for use by any other process in CA Workload Automation SE. The calendar is not regenerated unless specific action is taken.

When first building criteria, we recommend using the PRINT command to verify that the calendar is built to the intended specifications. If modifications to the criteria are needed, rebuild the calendar from the REFRESH function of the CALMOD command, or delete the existing calendar from the CALENDAR DSN.

Once the perpetual calendar criteria are built and verified, base calendars for that suffix are automatically generated, every following year, the first time the calendar is referenced for that year.

Note: For more information about calendars and scheduling, see the Database Maintenance Guide.